Some 120 world experts and visionaries have talked to me for Forbes on the Futures in focus podcast about where they see the world, the planet, technology, society, medicine, cloning, sports, the schooling systems, EV’s, VR, drones, plant based meat products, climate change, the future of 5G and the metaverse, wind based energy systems, diabetes solutions and cancer medication, printing organs and, a lot more.
These 120 people (91 pictured due to size restrictions) have dedicated their lives, their ideas and often a lot of capital to bring amazing ideas to practice. Their language is passionate and the ideas they have can at one level be big and bold, and at the other end it can get extremely technical and nuanced. Imagine trying to take these vast ideas covering so many dimensions and the hundreds of thousands of words in these conversations and try and see patterns or signals. These interviews form the underbelly of the next book I am working on, titled Envisage, 100 ideas about the world of ten years from now.
Two years ago, maybe one year ago, this would have either been a very manual and forensic examination by a team of people with expertise in the areas or a build of a database. Days, weeks and maybe months would go by with lots of revisions.
Welcome to the world of Hannah Ward a second year undergraduate of Geo Sciences at Texas A&M University in College Station. She is not Chat GPT, but she is part of the new generation of AI prompters who will train us how to use AI engines in our everyday work.
We recently interviewed the President of O’ Reilly media, the world’s leading publisher of technical books on areas like AI for the podcast (to be published soon on Forbes). We talked about the AI prompters getting paid six and seven figure salaries as corporations desperately try and jump onto the immense potential of AI. Buying expertise like an NFL first rounder. In less than 30 hours of work on Chat GPT with all the 120 transcripts Hannah has designed, programmed and adjusted the analysis straight from Chat GPT. Changing prompts and mixing the data sets with near instant flexibility. We got 30 distinctive patterns, signals and new ideas that combined big themes like printing organs, 5G and climate change into a very unique sets of connected insights. Hannah Ward is the smart future of work.
I learned three things from this exercise that we would all benefit from with AI:
Your assets for the future are around you right now
Sits stored in databases, transcripts, excel files, etc. We spend so much money and time constantly creating new information when in truth AI tools like Chat GPT and Hannah Ward show that we can go back into what we have to reveal remarkable new things. Before you fund the next research project, the next marketing writer or even maybe a data analyst look at how AI can do the job, maybe 80% right, but right now.
Let curiosity reign as there is little to no cost in it
Young, bright minds have a capacity for learning that is a wonder. They are not restricted by experiences that can sometimes distort our ability to handle new ideas or tools. Curiosity and a basic set of technical skills is the most important tool that young workers can excel at in-front of employees with decades of work experiences.
There is little to no cost to be curious with AI. You can experiment in near real time with almost no effort. This allows you and your teams to add value, thinking about what all this means or doing more value-added things. Again, in the Digital Helix one of the key indicators of success, was the organizations capacity for hard commits, not to ideas, but the process of designed experimentation, try it for yourself here. One of the major challenges, culturally, to adhering to his imperative for digital transformation success is the anxiety over locking down lots of valuable resources. Hannah shows that experimentation with AI coats your barely anything so the anxiety barrier should be nearly instantly removed.
Get ready to reengineer what your business does
AI is a practical tool that can open up immense opportunities to re-think how you do work, use data and even think about the data you have. One of the key Digital Helix DNA components from the Wall Street Journal best seller, The Digital Helix (2017), was about the ideas of themes or ideas and streams of data. Listen to the chapter here. The essence of the idea is that data showed that successfully digitally transforming companies showed a capacity for examining vast arrays of data across various themes. It was one of the toughest DNA components to get right. 75% of companies were not good at it and therefore failed an empirical digital transformation test. Hannah Ward just illustrated how to solve some of that challenge with a free AI engine, available online for any time of day. If you get inspiration after an evening shift in a restaurant these AI tools are constantly on, transformation partners for you.
If this example does not illustrate the immense power of AI, in a smart, young person’s hands, then you do not see the possibilities for what AI can help us with. AI is going to open a completely new view of the world for everything we are going to do. Right now, we should each have every department in our organizations in a pen down moment working out how to use AI not just for mundane tasks, but also, just for the act of curious learning.
It’s curious learning, aided by AI, like ChatGPT that might well be the strategy of the future for CEO’s and leaders looking to make breakthrough ideas for their organizations. Find yourself lots of Hannah Wards and hopefully her geo sciences colleagues will help solve our climate challenges with AI.
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